During semiconductor fabrication, and in particular when fabricating densely packed integrated circuits, limitations of photolithographic equipment dictate the minimum pitch (or feature width) available for any given process. For example, if a certain piece of equipment provides a 0.6 micron pitch, then the space between a patterned line and the cross-sectional length of the line must equal the pitch of 0.6 microns. The length and the space can vary, but their sum will always equal 0.6 microns.
In dynamic random access memory (DRAM) fabrication, the limitations of photolithographic equipment also dictates how densely the storage cells of a memory array can be packed. Technological advances demand that the memory array become even more densely packed to provide DRAMs in the order of 256 Mbit and higher, in order to meet their memory hungry demands.
There is a real need to be able to push beyond the photolithographic limitations and build denser memory arrays, while still using the current equipment available. The present invention provides such a method, as will become apparent in the disclosure made hereinafter.